Echinacea

Echinacea, also known as the Purple Coneflower, has got to be one of the easiest flowers to grow.

When we moved into our apartment where we live now (about 3 years ago), there were some blooming along the driveway. Very pretty, a nice touch of color in the summertime.

After each season I have cut them down nearly to the ground and that's that. Each year they come back on their own...usually spreading out more and more each year.

The first year I dried a bunch of them and saved the seeds, but I never had to re-plant them (so, I have a whole bunch of seeds if you want some easy to care for flowers!) 

Anyway....the second year they came up, we noticed that some of them were WHITE instead of purple. These are apparently called "White Swan Echinacea".  Why they weren't there the first year and then they were the second and third, I don't know, but they are pretty too and we don't mind the additional flowers.

Now, just the other day I was out looking through our flowers and noticed that one of our purple ones has two heads! Apparently its not uncommon with Echinacea, but I still thought it was really fun!

So, that was my fun find of the day.

I will say though, that even though they are SUPER easy to grow and require almost NO maintenance, I do have just ONE problem with the Echinacea, and that is how much the bees LOVE it. There is always a group of bees flying around our cluster of flowers.

I know, I know....Bees are good for pollination and all that, and we love Bee Movie at our house...but I still hate them. I've been stung a few too many times (most recently a couple weeks ago on the top of my foot, GR!) to fall into the category of people who say "leave them alone and they'll leave you alone." 

Oh well, I guess I'll deal with them as long as they keep my flowers blooming :-)